Russian vet authorities issuing seafood alerts on products from China, Vietnam and other countries

Russian vet authorities have continued to issue seafood alerts on products from China, Vietnam and other countries.

In particular, official circulars of Rosselkhoznadzor say that as of 7 May 2007 the body operating under the Ministry of Agriculture has imposed special controls on seafood imports from some other Chinese and Vietnamese plants taking into account results of lab checks discovering serious food safety violations in their products. Those plants are 4400/02183 (Guangzhou Tingfond Aquatic Food Development Co., Ltd.) and 4400/02270 (Maoming Changxing Foods Co., Ltd) from China and DL 152 (Nam Viet Company Ltd. (NAVICO)), DL 347 (BASA Co. Ltd.), DL 354 (Godaco Seafood) and DL 376 (Q.V.D Dong Thap Food Co., Ltd) from Vietnam.

According to comments from some Russian importers, the imposed routines are in fact an indirect ban of imports because the goods already shipped have to be seized and put in isolated storage while future shipments will be subject to total control for food safety and hardly any Russian importer will risk to go through all time-consuming loopholes of the strict vet procedures.

See full account of the test results for several countries in a separate report to appear shortly.

(See also the updated story "Russian vets blacklisting seven seafood plants from China and Vietnam" published on 8th May 2007).